Need A Free 1-Click BackUp Of Your Site? Try SnatchCode

As startups keeping cost low is a high priority but taking chances with your production code is also not possible. Usually one has to depend on the backup services provided by the hosting provider, which may not always keep your pockets happy. The minimum value plans are just not pragmatic for sites in development stage with very little disk utilization.

SnatchCode is a startup that addresses this problem of site backup. Targeted towards SMEs, SnatchCode is a 1-click free backup solution. One needs to provide their FTP details and the system takes care of the rest.

The service is free for under 1GB of data. For upto 7GB data there is a monthly fee of $7 and this plan comes with a one click restore option that replaces your current messed up files with the last backed up version. The service also offers MySQL DB backup.

Though the service looks neat and useful as well but adaption will have a friction from security point of view. Backup service from hosting provider has the credibility of being on the same premise but not in this case. Also opening FTP port for universal access may not be a good idea.

Do let us know what you think of SnatchCode. Can ‘free’ be a value proposition in business critical solution?

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» Need A Free 1-Click BackUp Of Your Site? Try SnatchCode @Pluggd.in.

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App Download Trends For India: 103Mn iPhone Apps Downloaded, 13.37 Mn iPad Apps

What is the adoption of apps with in-app purchase among publishers and consumers in India? What are the most important app categories where in-app purchase applications have the most traction?

The App economy is growing at a phenomenal rate, but app developers really need to understand the state of app purchases/downloads in order to build an app business (and not just apps).

Xyologic, an app search company has published app report data across 29 countries and here are a few important insights derived from the India report.

iPhone Apps Stats For India

- A total of 103.29 Million iPhone apps were downloaded in India.

- 12.92 million iPhone app downloads in India in August 2011.

- Of the 12.92 million, 11.74mn were Free Apps and 1.18 million were paid.

- 20,493 new iPhone apps in India in August 2011.

- Downloads of iPhone apps with in-app purchase in India in August 201.1 stood at 4.23M (32.77% of all downloads).

Top iPhone Publishers

Publisher	Free Apps Published	Downloads of Free Apps Last Month	Paid Apps Published	Estimated Revenue from Paid Downloads
Gameloft	71	238,000	88	103,000.00 €
Backflip Studios	16	147,000	8	5,000.00 €
TeamLava	13	139,000	0	0.00 €
Glu	34	109,000	20	6,000.00 €
Zynga	9	105,000	2	0.00 €
Armor Games Inc	6	103,000	11	16,000.00 €
Outfit7	10	92,000	8	1,000.00 €
Indigo Penguin Limited	46	82,000	31	0.00 €
Rovio Mobile Ltd.	3	80,000	2	12,000.00 €

 

Top Publishers (Paid Apps)

Publisher	Paid Apps Published	Downloads of Paid Apps Last Month	Free Apps Published	Estimated Revenue from Paid Downloads
Donut Games	28	33,000	0	24,000.00 €
Gameloft	88	30,000	71	103,000.00 €
Electronic Arts Nederland BV	61	26,000	25	18,000.00 €
Armor Games Inc	11	23,000	6	16,000.00 €
Triniti Interactive Limited	64	23,000	12	23,000.00 €
Miniclip.com	8	21,000	7	15,000.00 €
Chillingo Ltd	157	21,000	75	20,000.00 €
WhatsApp Inc.	1	19,000	0	13,000.00 €
Duello Games	1	18,000	1	13,000.00 €
Clickgamer.com	113	17,000	31	12,000.00 €

iPad Apps Stats For India

- So far, total of 13.37 million iPad apps have been downloaded in India.

-  2.77M iPad app downloads in India in August 2011 (total: 13.37)

- Out of the total apps downloaded in August 2011, 2.38 million were free and 0.39M were paid apps.

- Downloads of iPad apps with in-app purchase in India in August 2011: 1.18M, 42.45% of all downloads

WP7 Apps Stats For India

- Total of 0.19 million apps were downloaded in India, out of which  0.04million WP7 app (all of them were free apps) were downloaded in August 2011.

- 1,896 new WP7 apps in India in August 2011

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Link to download the report: http://xyologic.com/app-downloads-reports/India/

The report doesn’t have data from Ovi and Android – so take it as a relative study.

Having said that, we recommend that you study the report in-depth as it has a lot of valuable and comparative analysis (of categories/app downloads) which will help you hone your app strategy (and if you want to share more report insights with the Pluggd.in audience, do connect with us.)

* Important to note that the downloads numbers provided by Xyologic are statistical estimations based on the set of models and data samples which may not be a representative sample of the global app population.

[Via: Appnomy]

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» App Download Trends For India: 103Mn iPhone Apps Downloaded, 13.37 Mn iPad Apps @Pluggd.in.

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Online Tea Retailer Maimaicha.com Raising US$ 15M from Domestic Investors

Maimaicha.com, a Chinese B2C vertical provides online retail of tea today announced raising RMB hundreds of millions (US$ 15 million) in Series A round of funding from four domestic venture capitals.

The funding will go towards website upgrading, warehousing expansion as well as diving deeper into upstream industry chains, according to the Shandong (eastern China) province-based company.

Ma Yufeng, its CEO said the company has set up one warehouse in Ji’nan city of Shandong province at which it headquartered while a Beijing warehouse is currently under construction.

Founded in Oct. of 2010, Maimaitea.com is positioned to be an online tea retailer with unique strengths as its parent company possess its own tea plants as well as  tea processing factories.

As of now the tea vertical boasts daily PV of about 400k with daily orders of over 5k.

Chinese online marketplace is seeing amounting competition as Tencent, Shanda among other internet giants are in scramble for the fruitful waterfront with their latest initiatives, like B2C new comer Pinju.com by shanda and QQ Wanggou by Tencent. However, verticals focusing on a niche market still have their own edges as compared to general B2C sites.

 

 

Related posts:

1. Shanda’s Ecommerce Service Pinju.com Went Online
2. Online Luxury Store Xiu.com Raising $100 million in Series B
3. Walmart Invested 360buy, the Biggest 3C Online Retailer in China

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iichi: Marketplace For Handmade Goods From Japan (In English)

If you live outside Japan and were ever interested in getting handmade goods from this country, here's your chance: a service called iichi, which launched in Japanese in July this year, just opened a site in English.

The idea is similar to Etsy's : all products offered on the marketplace must be handmade. iichi is starting with 11 different categories (jewelry, toys, furniture, art, fashion, etc.).

There are currently a few hundred items available, covering everything from art objects that sell for over a thousand USD to handmade fashion items down to handmade glasses offered for a few dollars.

Here are some examples:

Every Japan-based "craft maker" can set up their own page on iichi and then let overseas users (from around 40 countries at present) buy directly through the website (via PayPal, which is the only payment option currently available).

Etsy is offering an "Etsy Japan" group, which also aims at connecting sellers of handmade goods in Japan with international buyers.

iichi: Marketplace For Handmade Goods From Japan (In English)

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Flipter makes the move to Chile

Flipter, an Echelon 2011 alumni, has been busy since we last met founder Salvador De La Barrera in June at the event. The Hong Kong-based question and answer social platform enables users to tap into public insight on any topic in a fun way. As an exhibitor, Flipter launched its service at Echelon and managed to gather valuable feedback from the conference’s attendees.

According to Sal, “ When we came back to Hong Kong we were invigorated, we took the feedback and got to work. Since Echelon, we have changed some of the design of our site. One of our new features includes the ability to group the questions. People now can use Flipter not only to create polls but to create surveys in a fun, social and easy fashion.” Another key feature that Flipter implemented after receiving feedback was the ability to follow people other than your friends. “One special thing about Flipter’s follow feature, is that it let’s you see how compatible you are with your friends and everyone on the network, the compatibility is based on the responses that people has given to questions and the interests they follow,” said Sal.

Apart from developing features, Flipter is also going through exciting times from the business side of things.Recently, the startup was selected to participate, in prestigious global accelerator program called Start-up Chile which offers US $40,000 of equity-free seed capital. According to Sal, “We are very excited about this news. With the program we will temporarily relocate to Chile and continue our efforts to raise more funds, develop our network, as well as continue to build our product. We find that since Flipter is already in Spanish and English, Chile is a good fit. 2012 is an exciting time for Flipter with presidential elections in various countries including USA, Mexico and Germany. We want to see people turning to Flipter when analyzing polls on who will win these elections.”

So, with new features added, an improved social widget and being accepted into Start-up Chile, what next does Sal has planned for Flipter? “ Our product has reach a level of maturity that we feel will now allow us to focus more on our marketing efforts. Our first step is to start working on building partnerships with web publishers and bloggers that are interested in improving the way their polls work through the quality and engagement of questions,” hints Sal, “together with these web publishers, we hope to become the social media application for polls and surveys and to become a place of reference where people can go to when looking to find out other people’s opinions on various topics. We want to become the Wikipedia of people’s opinions.”

It looks like Flipter is moving fast and heading in the right direction. Looking forward to hearing more about their Start-up Chile experience. All the best Sal!

Wait, isn’t a Malaysian General Election somewhere around the corner?

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Singapore-based gaming company Nubee gets S$17 million

Nubee, a Singapore-based mobile gaming company, has secured a first round funding of S$17 million (US$13 million) from JAFCO, a Japanese venture capital firm.

The gaming company was founded in November 2010 by Ukishiro Tomokazu, with Vega Corporation as its parent company.

Nubee has eight gaming titles under its belt. Examples include Japan Life, Coin Pirates, and Coins VS Zombies. Japan Life has garnered 2.5 million downloads in less than three months.

“With this funding, we can now scale up even faster and wider. We are already in the process of hiring more talented developers. We envisage doubling our current staff strength of 60 in 6 months’ time,” said Ukishiro, CEO of both Nubee and Vega.

JAFCO is one of the largest private equity firms in Japan. Headquartered in Tokyo, it has subsidiaries’ entities in Singapore, Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei, Seoul and Silicon Valley.

Previously, JAFCO Asia has invested in at least a couple of Singapore-based companies.

Mozat, a popular mobile social networking platform and a winner of the Red Herring 100 Global Award, raised a Series A funding of an unknown sum from JAFCO Asia in December 2009.

And in April 2010, Data Security Systems Solutions (DS3), an IT security firm that provides two-factor authentication to many leading banks, raised an undisclosed amount in Series A funding.

See press release.

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The Southeast Asian insider in DeNA

Recently, the Asian technology scene has been flooded with a flurry of Japanese activity. One of the latest headlining companies is social gaming company DeNA. First, with the acquisition of  Punch Entertainment Vietnam followed by Chile-based Atakama Labs S.A, the Japanese gaming giant has also set foot in Singapore and is currently using a Japanese incubator cum launchpad called CROSSCOOP Singapore. The recently launched KDDI and Singapore Economic Development Board supported incubation facility for Japanese companies transitioning into the region is capable of housing up to 50 companies and 170 staff.

To find out more about DeNA’s expansion strategies and plans for the region, e27 met up with DeNA Asia Pacific Holdings managing director, Tetsuya Mori, to hear more about the Singapore headquarter’s roadmap. Mori draws from a very diverse and rich background starting with an MBA at Yale and stints at McKinsey & Co., Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital before joining the gaming industry. Mori’s investing experience has exposed him to the potential of Southeast Asia, with a special admiration for Vietnam which he calls ‘The Hidden Gem’. “As I started investing more, I start to discover that Southeast Asia is fascinating. The whole region has a very fast growth, driving every industry to the right trajectory and cultivating ‘promising tomorrow’ psych in everyone’s mind,” said Mori.

Mori explains that DeNA’s Singapore subsidiary is the only subsidiary of the company that has a “holdings” status. The reason is because DeNA sees a lot of potential in the region and has actually laid out three goals that they hope to achieve in the region. The first is to identify talent in the region and provide them with support. Mori explains that the mobile game industry, unlike the console game industry, does not require a huge amount of capital and that a single talent within the group can actually provide them with substantial advantages over their competitors. Such is the appreciation and value of talent that DeNA is looking to connect with the developers in the region to identify and get these developers on board.

The second goal for DeNA is to establish partnerships within the region. Mori understands that as DeNA expands out into different countries, they require a lot of understanding of the various foreign markets. With plans to launch a mobile game in a Southeast Asian market by the first half of next year, it makes understanding the selected market even more crucial. According to Mori, “You’ll need lots of creativity, lots of local knowledge. This is not a market where you can go in and say ‘We are the big guys and we are going to put our flag on your soil.’ That is not going to work. You really have to fine-tune each market, you have to find out the right way, the right time. Otherwise, nothing will work.”

DeNA’s third goal differs slightly from the earlier two and focuses on the practical business decision for DeNA’s globalization movement. DeNA’s primary Japanese market and also their investments in the US are one of their higher revenue generating sources. Their last fiscal year brought in about US $1.5 billion in revenue with profit margins close to 50 percent. However, these markets are also one of the highest taxed markets in the world and DeNA is, like any other expanding Japanese company, searching for global opportunities where they can maintain a sustainable growth trajectory for the company.

Tetsuya Mori struck me as one that is well-versed with the cultural practices of the region. He understands the negative implications of an acquisition and maintains that DeNA only resorts to acquiring a company if they have specific goals to validate a buyout. For example, in the case of Punch Entertainment Vietnam. “They (Punch Entertainment Vietnam) are a very efficient and effective engineering house with very good experience. We wanted to augment our in-house development capacity outside  of Japan because hiring inside of Japan can be difficult and expensive,” said Mori. Mori also noted that Punch Entertainment’s value was also with their systematic development process that DeNA hopes to integrate into it’s own. Other than that, DeNA resorts to more conventional ways of winning the hearts of foreign developers through supporting them by providing tools, knowledge and if necessary, some funding.

Mori will be involved in  three of Techventure 2011′s panel discussing on the coming of age in Asian innovations, venture incubation and adoption and mobile gaming.

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Cloud Based Publishing Platform Genwi Raises $4Mn From Nexus Venture Partners, Launching In India Soon

US based Genwi has raised $4mn from Nexus Venture Partners and will be launching in India.

Genwi is a cloud based publishing platform that enables publishers to create and manage interactive, social, and live media apps on iPad, iPhone, Android, and HTML5.

Genwi has over 1500 apps built using its tablet and smartphone publishing platorm and products include Mobile Content Management Server (mCMS), iPhone, Android, & HTML5 (iSites) App and iPad App.

With the mCMS™ media engine and GENWI’s flexible client architecture, the flow, navigation, and content organization can be revised instantly and made immediately available to app users. Apps do not have to be resubmitted to the app stores for approval and users don’t have to upgrade their apps for small changes and content updates. This allows companies to create apps on mobile devices that are much more flexible and continuously upgradeable much like a SaaS product in the web space.

The company earlier raised funding from Inventus Capital/Quest Venture Partners and the additional capital will be used to build out the infrastructure and an extensive app network to offer more advanced monetization and distribution features for publishers, global expansion and the development of multilingual functionality.[source]

The company is soon launching its service in India, which is quite natural owing to growth in media space in India.

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Flipkart Acquires Mumbai Based Mime360

Flipkart has acquired Mime360 (Mallers Inc), a Mumbai based startup that offers exchange platform connecting content owners with content publishers (like saregama, Indiatimes etc).

MIME’s secure API Feeds help prevent piracy, and allows a large number of publishers to sell the licensed content globally.

• 2-way Piracy Prevention due to content delivery directly to end consumer, bypassing Publisher + Encrypted MP3 files (Proprietary).
• Speed to market – Exponentially faster than shipping Data on Hard Drives. Reaches any market faster than Pirates.
• Zero Content Delivery & Management cost – Content is cleaned, meta-data added and delivered via MIME’s own secure network.

Essentially, MIME eliminates several infrastructure costs for partners (Content Management, Storage and Local Data Centre Bandwidth) and enables content owners to even set regional pricing.

Flipkart has been looking to acquire small companies (in order to grow the team) and earlier acquired WeRead (which was shutdown 3 months before the acquisition).

Post acquisition, Mime360’s 12 member team will join Flipkart (via), which will be launching the digital music distribution service later(?).

Interested in Flipkart’s ‘untold’ story? Read : The Flipkart Story.

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» Flipkart Acquires Mumbai Based Mime360 @Pluggd.in.

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